I had a client recently who wished me to create a HTML email template which was no problem as I didn't struggle with coding it, just used tables, inline styles etc etcI have programmed them before but I usually automate the whole process using php, including the attachment of images etc.I have 2 questions:

This email is a one off that my client wished to send manually, I notice that Gmail and Hotmail and others allow you to read HTML emails but not to compose them so what is the best way for my client to use his pretty new template.

Secondly I have used full urls to his website logo images as presumably the recipient will be online when he/she reads the email which should load those images fine. What is the alternative in case they are offline, if my client is sending the email manually, shall I just instruct him to attach the images and if he does that how do I provide a substitute url in the HTML to deal with those relative image paths?

What about these online email templating services? Can you recommend a good one of those that he could just input my code and save for reuse later? Need one that can send the email as though it's from his address I guess.

What about these online email templating services? Can you recommend a good one of those that he could just input my code and save for reuse later? Need one that can send the email as though it's from his address I guess.

I've only used CampaignMonitor, and can highly recommend it. It's superb. You get great stats on the emails, templates are easy to set up and reuse, the email comes from your own domain name etc. etc. A popular alternative is MailChimp.